In certain markets and situations it is possible for issuers of a payment card to associate that card with multiple Debit Payment Networks (referred to herein as “debit networks” or “payment networks”). For payment card transactions that use the data on a magnetic stripe of the card, the merchant may then choose which of those debit networks should be used to route a transaction. The payment network routing decision will be determined according to commercial preferences and/or agreements encoded in the terminal or in the acquiring network.
When the transaction is read using magnetic stripe technology, there is typically only a single set of card data on the magnetic stripe and this data is (largely) independent of the terminal and network processing down the line. However, for payment transactions performed with EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) compliant chip cards and/or EMV processing flow, each payment network is typically represented by its own set of functionality and data on the card, which may be dependent on the terminal and networking processing down the line. If this is the case, then merchants need to be able to make a selection between the card functionality and data sets to determine how a transaction should be routed after a card is presented to the terminal for payment.
Currently, some merchants presented with a chip card for payment transactions are generally unable to select the right or desired set of card data to process or route the transaction based on the preference(s) of the merchants. Thus, there exists a need and desire to provide methods and systems that allow a merchant to select the appropriate set of card data to determine the desired network to process a payment card transaction.